Most of the work on this CD touches on the mythic American West. I find two successes and two misses. Route 66 evokes a high-speed cross-country drive, with one stop for a red light (a tuba solo). It has the energy of a hamster on crack. The piece begins with a close rhythmic canon on four trumpets, and insists on a particular rhythm (3+3+2) along most of its course. As it proceeds, we accelerate. A grand theme evokes the wide open spaces and big skies of the West. Toward the end, a cowbell knocks out, in Daugherty’s phrase, “a Latin groove” which becomes more and more prominent. We end on a contrapuntal extravaganza as all the ideas (and perhaps some new ones thrown in just for fun) sway with one another, like dancers at a feria, each one busting his or her individual move at the whim of a moment. I’d say that the piece was “fun,” but that would diminish it. It’s fun at the same level as Copland’s Rodeo or Stravinsky’s Pulcinella.

Daugherty also draws inspiration from Modern painting, notably Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in the violin concerto Fire and Blood. Raise the Roof paid homage to iconic buildings. In three movements—“Bone,” “Above Clouds,” and “Black Rattle”—Ghost Ranch tries to evoke the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, long resident in New Mexico. It didn’t do that for me, so I concentrated on the music itself, which I found uninteresting in itself. I should add that reviewers seem split over this work. Some see it as a “deepening” of Daugherty’s music. I certainly regard it as an attempt to branch out, and I applaud the composer for it. However, I feel he has succeeded in works like Fire and Blood and Brooklyn Bridge and just doesn’t cut the mustard here.

I can say the same of the most elaborate work on the program, Time Machine. Written in two movements (“Past” and “Future”) for three onstage orchestras (Daugherty specifies the placement) and apparently requiring three conductors, it strikes me as bland, something I wouldn’t have said about Daugherty until now. Furthermore, I don’t see why he needs three conductors. There’s nothing all that asynchronous or “phaseworthy” about the material, but for a few passages in the percussion, and surely professionamore....

Nach dem kurzen ‘Route 66’, dem Komponist zufolge ein “a high-octane musical romp”, folgt das evokative Stück ‘Ghost Ranch’ mit drei kleinen Tondichtungen von großer Ausdruckskraft. Das Werk ist eine Hommage an die Malerin Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1968), die durch ihre übergroßen abstrakten Blumen- und Landschaftsbilder bekannt wurde und eine Zeitlang auf Ghost Ranch lebte. Daugherty setzt das in einem wunderbar inspirierten Werk um, dessen Virtuosität die Orchestermusiker, besonders die Hörner, an die Grenze des Machbaren bringt. Die Bournemouth Musiker mögen bei der Arbeit geschwitzt haben, aber sie spielen einfach großartig!

‘Sunset Strip’ zeichnet Daugherty als kulturelles Melting Pot: Der Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles erklingt im Tagesablauf, von der Abenddämmerung bis zum Sonnenaufgang, vom abendlichen Trubel bis zum morgendlichen Hang over, der jedoch—L.A. ist nun einmal L.A.—mit Glanz und Glorie weggefegt wird. Auch hier gibt es Halsbrecherisches für das Orchester, aber die Bournemouthianer gehend damit ‘spielend’ um.

Das letzte Werk, ‘Time Machine’, mischt die Klänge von drei verschiedenen Orchesterformationen, und Marin Alsop hat darin die Hilfe von zwei weiteren Dirigentinnen. Hier gilt unser Lob nicht nur ihnen und dem Orchester, sondern auch den Tontechnikern, welche die drei Klangebenen spatial hervorragend dargestellt haben.

Eine mehr als willkommene und zur Vervollständigung des Bildes anspruchvoller zeitgenössischer Musik eminent wichtige Aufnahme!

The Performance Alsop has her players responding to the tearing energy of Route 66—a journey along the famous interstate—and the roguishness of Sunset Strip with verve and precision. Fun though all this is, its pleasures are a little predictable. A much more searching musical imagination emerges in Time Machine, for an orchestra split into three units with separate conductors, and even more in Ghost Ranch. This evokes the New Mexico landscape and the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe, in music ranging from Daugherty’s benchmark rhythmic energy to vivid, sinister stillness.

The Verdict Never underestimate the ready-for-anything skills of British orchestras! The BSO plays with a headlong flair and expertise that any American orchestra would rightly be proud of.

It is also an apt metaphor because Daugherty is something of a musical travelogue. Both Ghost Ranch and Sunset Strip deal with journeys of different kinds—the latter a vivid and self-consciously kitsch evocation of one of America’s most celebrated boulevards, the former more a portrait of rugged isolationism in New Mexico inspired by the work of artist Georgia O’Keeffe. At its best, Daugherty’s synthesis of melodic directness, rhythmic energy and mellifluous orchestration is absorbing and exhilarating, yet the music can become too narrative at times.

The composer states that his music “hovers between realism and abstraction”, and when the two elements are combined in more or less equal quantities—such as in the beautiful opening of Ghost Ranch with its gently unfolding canons—there is no doubting the music’s creative and expressive power. When the music weighs too much towards either one, the result is arguably less convincing, as in the programmatic realist literalism of the third movement of Sunset Strip or the abstract cerebral ruminations of Time Machine (for three conductors and orchestra). There is much to admire about this lively and colourful recording, however, not least the manner in which the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop actively thrive on playing music that communicates in such an immediate and engaging way.